Monthly Archive for October, 2006

I still remember meticulously typing reports on my father’s old typewriter, the kind that had no LCD screen so you had to manually wind the paper back to make corrections with your bottle and brush of white-out. Imagine my delight when I transferred schools and they had an Apple with a daisy-wheel printer. I also was excited when my friend’s dad bought him the latest in printer technology – dot matrix. It even had color!

We’ve certainly come a long way with printers. They have adopted the same business model that Sony and Microsoft created for their gaming systems. You sell the units for cheap and make money with the games, or in this case, the ink. This has led to very capable ink jet printers that are practically free, but once you run out of ink, you will be paying sometimes two to three times the cost of the printer to refill it. Regardless, this shift has brought the price of technology down and into allows the average person to have high quality printing at very affordable prices.

The most aggressive company in the last few years is certainly Samsung. They have captured the second position in the laser market and recently they announced the CLP-300. It’s touted as the world’s smallest and lightest color laser printer. Just ten seconds after reading a blurb about it, I made the decision to buy it. The next day I placed the order and the day after that I plugged it into my system. It measures just 15.4″ x 13.5″ x 10.4″ and weighs just 30 lbs. Let me remind you, this is for a color laser printer capable of 2400 x 600 dpi, at 17 ppm black and 4 ppm color. Samsung also employs their special NO NOIS system, which aside from the cheesy name, makes for very low noise printing and complete pitch-black silence when it’s idle. Instead of fat toner cartridges you might be used to with your HP or Dell, the Samsung uses five cylinder toner tanks. They are about the size of a narrow 8 oz cup and slide into the front of the printer (after you pull down the hatch), and snap in with a reassuring click. Since the inks are separated, you only have to replace the color that runs out.

The only downsides I have come across are that it doesn’t come with a USB cable and the paper tray only holds 150 sheets. Luckily, I have plenty of cables lying around and 150 sheets is plenty since I am using this for my home, and not an office or business. At $300, this color laser printer is a steal. It takes up very little desk space, is quiet, and fast. I was able to find it for a full $100 off and that cinched the deal for me. For those interesting in sharing the pritner on the network, the CLP-300N is available as the wired networkable version.

I simply cannot believe where technology has taken us. This is the type of stuff people used to talk about.